Facilis Descensus Averno
by ghoulical
Summary: (slenderverse/creepypasta/scp) a small-town detective is partnered with an enigmatic federal agent to investigate a peculiar case of mass homicide, but instead discovers a hidden world of shadows and monsters trapped in an endless loop of horrors where death is not an escape. - set in an alternate universe where everything co-exists together plus original characters.


We found seven bodies that morning.

Three in the first house, four in the other. The Smiths and the Walkers. Sounded weird when I spell it out like that, considering how run-of-the-mill those names sounded. Of course, I never knew them—detectives don't often know who their victims were prior to their deaths and subsequent investigations, but we do get to know them as the case evolves. At the end of it, we would know more about them than even their closest relatives and friends did.

Not that there had been many of them, anyway. And certainly not ones of this scale.

When I got to the scene, the technicians were there, the photographs had been taken and the last of the evidence was being collected. The medical examiner in charge, Dr. Jane Wang, who also happens to be a dear friend of mine, was just about done making initial assessments on the victims' corpses. Of course, all I was told through the brief phone call I got calling me to the scene was that it was a mass murder case, but I didn't know how many bodies were there. Not until I got inside and took a look at it myself.

"First victim: Jordan Smith, sixteen. Cause of death was major blood loss from two incision wounds his upper abdomen, right above the kidneys."

Wang pulled up his shirt and pointed at the wounds, which were on either sides of the poor kid's abdomen, tilted at odd angles. There were dried bloodstains all over the skin, including splotches that could've been from the culprit's fingers, but no fingerprints. There was, however, a large amount of blood that spilled to the carpet beneath him, enough that I could deduce what he died from even without Wang confirming it to me.

"Note that I called incision wounds and not stab wounds," Wang continued. "The killer sliced the victim's skin open with a sharp cutting tool, maybe a small knife or an x-acto knife or even a scalpel. I can tell more when we cut these stitches open."

Stitches, because indeed the cuts were _stitched_ , of all things. Not well enough, considering the skin around the cuts was swollen and bleeding, enough to cost the kid his life, from what I could assume.

"The killer stitched the wounds back up for some reason. Crude, very poorly done—definitely not a professional. There's more."

Of course, there was more. The door to the master bedroom was ajar and I could smell the stench of blood from down the hall—you never get used to it, even after all this time. And I could tell it didn't just come from the teenager from before.

The master bedroom itself was a mess. Small shards of shattered glass and ceramic on the floor, near where the smashed lightbulb protruding from the broken lamp was. The lampshade was across the room. Feathers from pillows thrown and strewn apart all throughout the room, making it difficult to traverse the area without disturbing the crime scene. A man, lying face-up on the floor amidst the shattered glass, in a pool of blood that grew beneath him and staining what was once his carpet. On top of the bed was who I could assume to be the man's wife, lying much more peaceful than the rest of the room.

"The kid's parents?"

"John and Marilyn Smith, both in their late forties. Cause of death is about the same: blood loss from stitched incisions found in the upper abdominal area."

"Talk about a mass homicide case."

"Sweetie, we haven't even gotten started yet."

It didn't occur to me that the adjacent house, which also had police tape sealing the area off, was also part of the crime scene, or at least part of the same one.

There were two children in this one, an older daughter and a younger son, with two parents. The toys in the children's bedroom was similar to the Smiths' pillows. Some were beheaded, others had their guts ripped out, but from what I could see, it was done on purpose, as if whoever did it was doing it for dramatic effect, considering it wasn't sign of struggle and there weren't bodies in the room. There was, however, a blood trail that led to the master bedroom. Saying that room was a bloodbath would be the understatement of the millennium.

The Smiths' house was _clean_ compared to the Walkers'. There was blood all over the walls and all over the floor—I had to stop myself and put a hand over my mouth so I wouldn't throw up on the spot. There was a handprint smeared across the wall and ending where the hand was, half-attached to its owner whose guts had been ripped out like the dolls in the other room—that was the Walkers' matriarch. Her husband was on the other side of the room, his chest decorated with multiple stab wounds. Their children were the ones dragged into the room, lying face down on the stained carpet, entrails laid out for all to see. Whoever did this was a sick fucker who no doubt enjoyed the killing more than the kill itself.

Of course, the killer just had to leave a message for us. Three words were painted across the wall above the bed, the killer's own fingers as their paintbrush, and the ink was a deep crimson red—the Walkers' blood.

 _GO TO SLEEP_ , it said.

I knew that this line of work had its downsides, but that was one image that would not disappear from the forefront of my mind any time soon. I doubt I could even forget it in my entire lifetime.

"I know, right?" Wang mused from beside me, but when I turned to face her, she looked nothing more beyond perturbed. "It's almost poetic, if it weren't for the dead bodies scattered all around the room."

Samuel and Diana Walker, with children Lisa, fifteen, and Lucas, her eight-year-old brother.

"Cause of death is multiple stab wounds in both the chest and abdominal area and subsequent blood loss. From as far as I can tell, the killer struck most major organs and severed a lot of arteries to kill them within seconds. It'll be like solving a jigsaw puzzle trying to perform autopsies on these poor souls. Who could do something like this?"

A monster, I wanted to tell her. "Different M.O.s but adjacent houses—direct neighbors," I said instead. "Time of death?"

"From what I can determine, both the Smiths and the Walkers died last night, within a similar time frame as each other. I'll be able to tell more once I get back to the office."

No murder weapon was recovered, but there was a kitchen knife missing from the Smiths' knife block. Footprints from the Walkers' bedroom were traced out to the backyard but stopped after the fence, where a bloodstained handprint was stamped onto the wood with no fingerprints, as before. Beyond the fence, the trail stopped, almost as if the killer—or _killers_ —had vanished into thin air after committing the deed.

Neighbors' testimonies weren't all that helpful, either. The house on the other side of the Smiths' was vacant and had been so for several months, and the Walkers' other neighbors were either fast asleep or had their stereo turned up loud enough that no one heard a single thing from next door. The ones living across from both families were… well, pre-occupied, per se, with _other_ distracting activities.

No witnesses, no starting leads to follow, and bodies stacked upon bodies. This was not the good start I had hoped for when I woke up that morning. But as the crew finished up their work at the scene of the crime and I was preparing myself to head back to the office to start digging up more information on the victims, I thought to myself, things couldn't possibly get worse, right?

* * *

The captain called me into his office later that noon.

I didn't know what he would call me in for, considering I'd been a decent detective in the force for the time that I'd been working as one, but not enough to get some kind of promotion or something, not with the slow trickle of cases that landed on my lap. Otherwise, the captain is usually a man of few words, often lending a hand and an ear out for his subordinates but rarely requesting another person's presence in his office himself. I knew something was up even before I got to the front of his office door, where I heard another male voice I could not recognize, speaking from inside the room.

"Detective Bishop." Captain McCormick greeted me with a warm smile, as always. The man who stood opposite to me—middle-aged, suit and tie, decent but rugged looks with slicked-back hair and a sharp nose—offered a tight-lipped glance of acknowledgement. "This is Special Agent Joel Gilliam of the FBI. He will be joining you under a joint investigation over the Smiths' and Walkers' case."

"What?"

"Special Agent Gilliam, this is Detective Abigail Bishop, the current detective in charge of the case."

The suit offered a stiff hand towards me, which I shook with apprehension, but shook regardless.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand what this case has to do with the FBI. This case is under our jurisdiction. I can handle it myself."

"I'm afraid not, Detective Bishop." _Oh,_ I thought, _the suit speaks_. His voice was about as pleasant as his appearance—distant and too professional. He sounded like the type of person who didn't have a lot of friends outside of work. "Not that I am questioning your jurisdiction, nor do I doubt your abilities in your line of work. But I believe that I can offer you great help in your ongoing investigation."

I turned back to the captain. "Sir, we just found the bodies this morning."

"And it seems that it drew in enough press coverage that it's become the talk of the town," the captain replied, nodding his head at the television in the corner of the room which I hadn't realized was on—the suit distracted me. Sure enough, a news channel was being displayed on screen, with blurred footage taken from some perp who must've been present at the crime scene. Soon after, one of the neighbors I talked to earlier that morning, the one who discovered the bodies of the Walkers, showed up on screen, being interviewed about what she'd discovered inside the Walkers' home. _Idiots_. "Newrock _is_ a small town, you know. Word travels fast, but the press works faster."

"And somehow, this got to the feds within the span of, what, five hours?"

The suit was trying to suppress a frown. The captain sighed at me.

"Special Agent Gilliam here is interested in this case because he knows who the culprit is."

"Who the culprits _are_ , captain," the suit corrected. If his face had cracked just a little bit more, I would've said he was proud of what he was offering to the table, which was a table that had been mine to begin with and one I intended to defend until the end. "I am almost a hundred percent positive of who is responsible behind the deaths of the Walkers. As for the Smiths, I might need to confirm a few suspicions, but judging from what I've been briefed about concerning the circumstances the victims were found in, I can take an educated guess about it."

Impossible, I thought. "Please. Enlighten me."

"The Walkers—the ones with their organs ripped out, violently murdered, and the message on their bedroom wall—is most definitely the latest handiwork of one Jeff the Killer."

He offered me a manila folder which I snatched from his hands more than accepted it with grace. I flipped open the cover and almost dropped my shit. Attached to the first page was one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen my entire life, discounting the Walkers' crime scene. A person—or what looked like a human being—with paper-white skin, wide, bloodshot eyes, long black hair and the most spine-chilling red-lipped smile I've ever seen, something almost akin to the smile of Joker from those Batman comics. It seemed unnatural, misshapen and a grotesque maiming of his own appearance, like he carved it himself with a common kitchen knife. The stuff of children's and perhaps even adult's nightmares.

"Is this some kind of joke? Some prank you're pulling on me? Because this—" I slammed the folder shut and waved it in front of him, "—this isn't funny."

"His name was Jeffrey Woods." There was no smile. No waver in his voice. He was dead serious about this. "A troubled child with a violent streak. He was bullied after moving into a new neighborhood, until he decided to retaliate and attempted murder on the same kids who bullied him. A few days later, his house was set on fire and the boy was just barely saved, suffering from second-degree burns and hospitalized for weeks. His face and his hair were charred from the fire, permanently deforming him. The day after he came home from the hospital, his family was found dead in their bedrooms, and the boy disappeared. A few weeks later, another family turned up dead in their home just a couple of miles from where the Woods lived. The third family he tried to take out left a single surviving victim who suffered from severe lacerations, and his description of the family's attacker matches the current description of Jeffrey Woods. All his victims have the same M.O.—multiple stab wounds, victims either dead on the spot or bleeding to death, with the words 'GO TO SLEEP' painted across their walls in their blood."

The captain made a visible shudder. I was still skeptical.

"And how come I've just known about all this?"

"Because we have been doing our best to keep this under tight wraps," the suit responded. His voice was just a little bit tenser than it was before—a sign of agitation. "Jeff is reckless—he leaves breadcrumbs for us to follow, which we do, until either one of our own ends up dead in his hands, or he disappears off the face of the planet and resurfaces some weeks or months later with another kill. The only reason public has yet to know about people like him is because we are keeping it that way. It is my responsibility to ensure that the public stays in the dark about this." He paused. "Unfortunately, it seems that the situation has spiraled out of our control this time, hence the shared jurisdiction over this case."

"And I'm supposed to believe this bullshit?"

"Bishop—"

"Believe what you want, detective," the suit continued as he snatched the folder right out of my hands and back to his. He had appeared here in the office with two folders in his hands—I had yet to see the contents of the second one, but part of me that was struggling to grasp the idea of some homicidal teenager told me that maybe it was best that I didn't. "I am offering you counsel concerning your latest case and a strong possible suspect. If he leaves his breadcrumbs as always, I am more than willing to cooperate with you in order to put this monster behind bars as much as you do and as soon as possible. You are, of course, free to investigate your own list of suspects of your own volition, but if this is indeed the work of Jeff the Killer, then I have done nothing more than save you a few steps."

I scoffed and turned back to the captain. I wish I could just ignore the suit and walk out. "Sir, do you believe him? This—this bullshit about some bullied kid turning into some homicidal maniac? All of this?"

He pretended to give it some thought, and I appreciated the effort. "I believe Special Agent Gilliam can provide you with some interesting insights concerning your case, detective. And besides, the FBI not claiming complete jurisdiction over the whole damn thing is a miracle enough of its own, considering what we're dealing with here."

The case was bad, I had to admit. But I was prepared for a challenge—I had been waiting for one. I was not going to give it up or share it with some federal agent, FBI or otherwise, without at least some fight. But the rational half of me acknowledged the truth in the captain's words. I was fortunate to still be considered as lead investigator of the case, even if the title had to be shared with someone else.

I sighed. I wasn't going to win this fight, but at least I fought.

"This _isn't_ a prank or some sick joke? This shit's for real?"

"I assure you, this is as real as it can get, detective," the suit replied, still with his curt tone that was beginning to irk me as the minutes passed. Could there be just one sliver of emotion behind his voice? Not all feds were like this, right? "Now, we can get started with the standard investigative procedure if you'd like. But once we've hit the dead end, then with all due respect, I suggest that you start reading up on these studying materials, detective."

He lifted the first manila folder again, the one he handed to me before, and gave it a short wave at me, mimicking what I'd done to him just moments ago. What's more of a miracle, I figured, was how I had yet to snatch it back from him and smacked him across the face with it. I'd risk the charges of assaulting a federal agent just for the satisfaction of doing the damn act.

"Fine," I decided, glaring at the suit. The smallest hint of a smirk appeared across his lips and I struggled to suppress the aforementioned aggressive urge. "But this was my case first. That means we play by my rules, understood?"

He gestured to me with an open palm and smiled. It wasn't too bad. For a second there, I almost mistook him for an actual normal human being there.

"By all means, detective. By all means."


End file.
